1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to storage, retrieval, and display of graphical information, and more specifically to such storage, retrieval, and display of such information in connection with identification of specimens in marine environments, including aquaria, lakes, and oceans.
2. Description Relative to the Prior Art
This invention is intended to be used in large-scale public marine aquariums, such as the Boston Aquarium, Sea World of Orlando, Fla., the Seaquarium of Miami, Fla., etc. It has additional applications in other marine environments, such as lakes and oceans. As an example, some modern facilities located contiguous to a bay or harbor provide an under-water viewing area, using a wall made of plate glass or other transparent material, through which marine activity can be viewed. Furthermore, the invention is also applicable to snorkelers or scuba divers, who may carry a small, waterproof, electronic version of the invention while swimming or diving.
The invention has the object of providing information about specimens in the marine environment, such as the name, habitat, size, habits, diet, history, and other such information, hereinafter referred to as demographic information, in an improved and interactive environment. The intended audience for this invention is the visiting public attending the aquarium or other marine observation facility, divers, and viewers of activity within other types of marine environments. Viewers include those remotely connected to the marine environment, such as those connected through data communications networks, including the Internet, to cameras creating images of the environment, and the like.
Currently this type of information is commonly provided in public aquaria and marine viewing facilities in limited form by means of displays comprising posters, signs, and the like located in some proximity to the specimen to which the display relates. Often the display has the picture of a specimen, such as a fish, so that the visitor or viewer can attempt to identify the specimen by its likeness in the display. The display also may have a certain amount of statistical data about the specimen. However, the current systems of this type have a number of drawbacks:1. The specimens in the marine environment often appear very different from the pictures in the display;2. The number of such displays in a particular area are limited by the space available for such displays;3. As new specimens are added or removed (or expire), the displays need to be constantly updated;4. These display systems are often underutilized through lack of interest, difficulty in seeing the displays when the aquarium is crowded, and the requirement of reading long paragraphs of text.
A desired improvement in the prior art is the use of graphic techniques to identify particular specimens, including fish, invertebrates, etc., by first capturing a graphic image of the specimen as it appears in the marine environment, next identifying the specimen by comparing its image to a library of such images stored on the system, and then, upon identification, providing other information associated with the specimen, both graphic, textual, sonic, and otherwise, to the viewer.
To provide such a system requires the use of a number of different technologies, including graphic identification of the specimen images. A number of recent improvements in the technology provide assistance in this graphic identification requirement. In particular, the Face Recognition Machine described by Lambert in U.S. Pat. No. 5,012,522, describes a technology which may be helpful in this regard. However, the nature of the marine specimens to be so identified have characteristics which make other means of graphic identification more appropriate than the face recognition system of the Lambert patent. The variation in human faces is not very great compared to the variation in the shapes, sizes, colors, and patterns found in the marine marine environment.
Additional identification techniques involve means for effecting the separation of the image of the specimen from the background. The system is capable of analyzing images by utilizing local feature analysis, by performing an initial feature extraction which leads to image processing which consists of clustering or neural networking. These techniques are well know in the art, and are described in a recent New York Times article, page E1, May 3, 2001.
Still other means of graphic identification, utilizing colors, patterns, size variations, edge identification, etc., are used for identifying specimens in the current invention.
The current invention solves most of problems described above. In public aquaria, one or two electronic display screens, such as VDT or computer monitors, replace the multiplicity of display signs currently used. The information is conveyed to the visitors either visually, through text and pictures, through sound, or a combination of the two. And because the system utilizes an aquarium-wide network with a single database, the updating of images and information is done at a single location out of the way of the visitors and the aquarium tanks and viewing areas. This updating may be done at the convenience of the personnel doing the updating, since it does not interfere in any way with the visitors who may be viewing the displays being updated.
In other implementations, the viewing is done by the use of the personal computer, and selection and capture of the specimens of interest, as well as the software for identification and display of the demographic information relating to the specimen, may be done within the computer, or elsewhere within the data communication network.
A general object of the current invention is to provide a system for enhancing the experience of viewers of marine environments.
A specific object of this invention is to provide such a system by means of one or more viewing stations available to these viewers, each of which may be used to designate a particular specimen within the marine environment by its location and then to automatically identify the specimen and display various demographic data concerning the specimen.
According to one aspect of the invention, a system for storage, retrieval, and display of information relating to specimens in marine environments includes determining the location of a specimen under investigation (SUI) in the marine environment, indicating the location of the SUI within a field of view, and optically scanning a restricted area around the location. It also provides storing a database of specimens comprising identification information and demographic information, bulk-shape-comparing of the images, comparing color filtered images, comparing aspect-ratio filtered images, recording control fields of view without specimens, comparing fields of view with the control fields of view, spectral analysis of images, selecting a specimen of the database as a result of the comparison, and outputting the demographic information corresponding of the specimen.
According to a second aspect of the invention, the system includes one or more viewing stations, each of which includes means for the determining the location of the SUI, capturing the video image of the SUI, and displaying the demographic information corresponding to the specimen. The system also contains a computer network connected to each of the viewing stations, the computer system including means for storing a database of specimens, comparing the video image to the database, and selecting a specimen of the database.
According to a third aspect of the invention, the selecting of a specimen of the database further includes either a mouse, a track ball, a touch screen, and a joy stick, or any combination of those elements.
According to a final aspect of the invention, the outputting the demographicinformation includes either a video display terminal, audio loudspeakers, audio earphones, and printers, or any combination of those elements.